NordVPN vs TunnelBear VPN 2020

At first glance, NordVPN vs. TunnelBear hardly seems like a fair comparison; TunnelBear only has servers in 20 countries compared to the over 60 countries that NordVPN users can choose from.

However, TunnelBear still commands quite a good user base and it has a free VPN that entices millions of users. Further, it works in China, something that only a few other VPNs can claim to do. NordVPN on the other hand has made a name for itself and it’s now the VPN with the most VPN servers. But how do these two VPNs compare?

How do these VPNs Compare?

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TunnelBear is known for its quirky sense of humor, but it doesn’t really compare to NordVPN when it comes to the more serious issues like privacy, features, and support. The VPN is based in Canada (a 5 eye country) and it was recently bought by McAfee (a US based company). It also doesn’t offer any advanced features, and there’s no live chat support.

NordVPN excels in all these categories and basically just betters anything that TunnelBear can do. The VPN is feature-packed and is registered in the privacy-friendly Panama. And although TunnelBear offers a free plan, this package is usually limited to only 500 MB of data a month. Their cheapest plan goes for $4.99 a month but you can get the superior NordVPN at just $2.75 a month.

Speed

TunnelBear is fast, but NordVPN is faster.

TunnelBear is surprisingly fast despite the few number of servers that the VPN has. That said, it’s nowhere near as fast as NordVPN which is one of the fastest VPNs at the moment. TunnelBear also takes longer to connect, and its ping is significantly higher.

Why Most Speed Tests are Pointless & How We Correctly Test VPN Speeds

Speed determines how fast content uploads, so if you're torrenting or streaming, you want the speed to be somewhat identical to your regular internet speed. Since a VPN encrypts your data, it usually takes a bit longer to send your data back and forth, which can slow down your connection. However, if your ISP deliberately slows down your connection (also known as throttling) a VPN might increase your internet speed. Testing a VPN is somewhat pointless because new servers pop up and affect speed. Your speed can also differ according to your location, so your speed test might not match ours. Having said that, we tested the speed in numerous locations to provide you with the average.

Servers

NordVPN’s server network is far much bigger and diverse.

NordVPN has a total of 5,200+ servers spread across 60 countries, while TunnelBear has just 350+ VPN servers located in 20 different countries. NordVPN’s network size ensures that you can never the clogged with many other users in the same server, and that you can connect to almost any region in the world.

Further, the VPN has special servers like torrenting, double VPN, anti-DDoS, and dedicated IP servers. With these, you can accomplish any task and stream Netflix and any other streaming platform.

The Big Mistake When Comparing Number of Servers and What to Really Look For

The ratio of servers to countries is an important factor to look at when choosing a VPN. Only paying attention to location or number of servers can get you in trouble. More servers generally means faster speeds, but if VPN X has a few more servers than VPN Y but twice as many users, VPN X will typically have slower speeds. Ideally, you want a VPN that has a lot of servers in every location. This way you won’t have to worry that server/country that you want will be overburdened and running slow

Support

NordVPN offers 24/7 live chat customer support which TunnelBear doesn’t.

Both NordVPN and TunnelBear provide sufficient installation and troubleshooting guides as well as FAQs. However, the most important part when it comes to support is ease of reaching out to the customer support team and the quality of service they offer.

While NordVPN gets all the support areas right, TunnelBear support service is almost non-existent. First of all, they don’t offer live chat support. The only way you can reach them is through a ticket system, and you can wait for many hours to get a reply.

NordVPN on the other hand offers 24/7 live chat support service so that users and potential customers can always talk to an agent. There’s also an email and ticketing system that can assist you with technical challenges within 2 hours.

How We Test Customer Support and Why Should You Care

We personally test the customer support team of every VPN we review. This means asking technical question through the live chat feature (where applicable) and measuring the response time for email questions. Whether you need to connect to a specific server, change your security protocol, or configure a VPN on your router, finding a VPN with quality customer support should be important to you.

Ease of Use

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NordVPN is really a simple program to use. The downloading and installing process goes by very quickly and then all you need to do is login with your username and password and you’re all set.

From there, you can customize your connection and use features such as a Kill Switch, double VPN, Onion over VPN, CyberSec, Anti-DDoS, and DNS & IP Leak protection. You can easily connect to a server by selecting one from the map on the main screen.

Connecting only takes a few seconds, and we didn’t experience any issues with the apps.

TunnelBear will only take you a few minutes from creating an account and setting up the app on your laptop or smartphone. Once you log in, you’ll find the VPN to be extremely user-friendly.

That, together with the cute bears that will tunnel on-screen from your location to the server, make it fun to use. To change your location you can just click on the tunnel icon on the map and the bear will dig a tunnel for you so you can start browsing from there.

Unfortunately you won’t have many features to choose from as the VPN tends to keep things simple. There’s however a kill switch and a GhostBear, which is the VPN’s obfuscation technology.

The smartphone app resembles the desktop app and it’s just as easy to use.

THE WINNER IS

Which VPN Will You Choose?

From our tests and analysis, you can clearly see that TunnelBear has a long way to go before it can compete with NordVPN. We suggest that you go for NordVPN to get a more complete package at a better price. More Info

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